The Outcast Girls

by Alys Clare

  Kathleen nods vigorously. ‘Isa Hatcher, yes, back in December, she’s a Senior and she’s in Alice.’ She leans closer, her mouth right by Lily’s ear. ‘Esme and I didn’t think they were—’

  Lily becomes aware that the door behind her has just opened quietly. Spinning round, she sees Miss Dickie standing right at her shoulder, considerably too close for comfort. She stares at Lily for a heartbeat, her eyes cold, then the face-crinkling smile appears and she says, ‘Sensible of you to familiarize yourself with your charges, Nurse. No cases for you here, however.’ She steps back, a clear invitation for Lily to take herself off, and Lily has no option but to do so.

  ‘Good day, Kathleen,’ she says cheerfully to the redhead, now blushing with the awkwardness of the moment, ‘and thank you for introducing me to Green dormitory.’

  Relief at having been given an excuse for being found deep in conversation with the new assistant matron floods Kathleen’s face, and she nods vigorously. ‘Thank you, Nurse!’ she gasps.

  And, her outer calm masking a fast-beating heart, Lily walks away.

  Esme and I, she thinks as she returns to her room and her breakfast. Esme Sullivan, the runaway. Were Esme and Kathleen in the same dormitory? Lily wonders if there is a way she can find out, and, as she turns into the sick-bay corridor she thinks of one. Before she can ask herself if it is wise she is knocking on Matron’s door.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you again, Matron,’ she says briskly, ‘but I have now visited all three of the Junior dormitories and I would like to have a list of the girls in each, and in the senior dormitories, with their medical history, if such a thing exists?’

  ‘Of course it does!’ Matron bridles, not an easy feat when slumped in bed. ‘There’s a ledger – a big, thick book bound in brown leather – and it records all the girls’ names and details of their general health, their problems and complaints. It ought to be on the shelf above the little table in the treatment room, but that fool Evans has probably left it in the last place she was looking at it, which could be anywhere because she’s careless and simply will not abide by my rules and—’

  Lily, recognizing a rant when she hears one starting up, quickly interrupts. ‘Thank you, Matron, please don’t disturb yourself’ – Matron is starting to roll around like a hippopotamus in mud, probably in preparation for getting out of bed – ‘I’m sure I shall find it.’

  She leaves the fusty room, closing the door firmly behind her. She is aware of the cacophony of feet as the girls hurry down to breakfast in answer to the bell’s loud summons, and reckons she has a good half an hour before anyone comes to interrupt her. She lets herself into the treatment room and begins her search.

  The ledger is not on its accustomed shelf – Lily is quite sure she would have spotted it by now if it had been – and it takes her almost a quarter of an hour of rummaging before it turns up beneath the boards that form the floor of the little cupboard where the sanitary napkins are kept. Nurse Evans had perhaps been recording the issue of napkins to a girl, if such things are recorded, but then why put the ledger under the floor? An aberration, perhaps, while she was distracted by anxiety over her mother?

  But then all thoughts of what Nurse Evans might or might not have been thinking are driven from Lily’s mind, for she has opened the big ledger and discovered it to be the very item she would have prayed to have access to, for not only does it list the present occupants of the six dormitories; it also covers the last four and a half school years.

  And, as Lily begins to turn the ledger’s pages, she understands that it must have been hidden in the bottom of the cupboard – by someone in a hurry, perhaps – precisely so that the temporary assistant matron will not get a sight of it. Not by Matron, since it is she who has just innocently made Lily aware of it. Then by whom? Who dashed into the treatment room between Nurse Evans’s departure and Lily’s arrival and found that hiding place?

  Lily turns to the first page of the ledger. It lists each dormitory’s occupants at the start of the September term in 1876. She starts to read.

  The first discovery is that the ledger records the details and the health of Shardlowes staff as well as that of the girls. Not Miss Carmichael or Miss Dickie, but everyone else from teachers to maids and kitchen staff. Lily comes across Georgiana Long, forcing herself to skim over the details of the English mistress’s minor complaints, although she can’t help noticing that Miss Long’s limp is, as she had suspected, because of a club foot. (She also notes that Miss Long only joined the school a little over a year ago, replacing an earlier English teacher called Genevieve Swanson.) She finds the record for Mademoiselle Clemence Launidel: she has already noticed the French teacher, who is young, pretty other than the absence of chin, fussy about her appearance and snooty, and who suffers from periodic headaches so severe as to necessitate bed rest in a darkened room with cold flannels for her forehead and generous doses of laudanum. There are only three other members of the teaching staff, other than Miss Carmichael and Miss Dickie: Miss Mallard must be the white-haired, elderly and prickly history teacher who, judging by the ledger, has not had a day’s illness in four and a half years, and Miss Smithson, then, is the plump middle-aged woman with the shawls, the veils, the flyaway hair escaping from the grey bun and the perpetual air of being flustered and a little late, who teaches art and music. The last teacher is Geraldine Blytheway, known to her colleagues and her pupils alike as Miss Gerry, who is responsible for all physical activities from hockey to country dancing as well as an activity referred to as comportment. She is a strapping young woman with an Eton crop and a manly stride who dresses in a severe flannel skirt and a white shirt with a collar and tie. Other than frequent embrocation rubs administered by the assistant matron, Miss Gerry appears to enjoy excellent health.

  Lily turns to the lists of pupils.

  Immediately she appreciates why a relatively small community like Shardlowes School requires both a matron and an assistant matron, for this section of the ledger is crammed with words in small handwriting neatly entered beside many of the names. Lily recalls Miss Long’s remarks about the halt and the lame, and understands.

  Beside some names she notices small symbols; some sort of discreet code, perhaps, to indicate when a girl is in a delicate state of health? Lily has come across such overly sensitive measures throughout her nursing career, and while she understands the reason for them – menstruation is simply not a matter for discussion, even among girls and women – nevertheless she is frustrated by this attitude.

  She reads on.

  Presently she notices other symbols, some repeated quite regularly, others more haphazard in their distribution. She tries and fails to spot a pattern.

  She recognizes the repetition of names allocated year by year to different dormitories as girls progress up through the school. Louise dormitory is clearly for the oldest girls, and the last place where their names appear; Red is for the youngest. Sometimes names disappear at the end of a school year rather than appearing in the next dormitory up.

  Lily stares at one particular symbol that appears perhaps four or five times in total. She thinks she has seen it before. She wonders what it means.

  She flips on through the ledger to the pages recording the current population of Shardlowes School. She reads the seven names in Green. One of them is Marigold Dunbar-Lea; another is Cora Naughton-Smythe. Nobody has erased or even put a pencil line through Cora’s name; do they believe she will come back?

  How can they all be so calm? Lily, looking up from the ledger, is suddenly filled with a powerful emotion that at first seems like anger: amazed, flabbergasted anger. Here she sits in this elegant establishment with its well-behaved pupils, its cool and restrained headmistress, its decorum, its polite good manners, yet beneath the smooth surface a horror has happened, for one girl has run away and two more are missing.

  One of them is only eleven years old.

  Lily trembles as anger gives way to something else and from out of nowhere she experiences
a sweeping dread that sends a cold blade up her back and forces her to stifle a gasp of dismay.

  And she cries silently, Why don’t they DO something? Why don’t they try to find them, uncover what’s happened to them?

  It is as if something within her answers her own question, for a quiet voice seems to say, That is why you are here.

  She sits perfectly still, letting the powerful sensations run their course. Anger probably will not help, and paralysing dread most certainly won’t.

  She begins to feel calmer.

  She goes back to the ledger, turning to the seniors. Six girls aged between thirteen and fourteen in Alice dormitory, although one of them, thirteen-year-old Isa Hatcher, is no longer there. Lily feels the power of her anger resurge, but she controls it. As with Cora, there is no indication beside Isa’s name that she has gone. Lily notes in passing that she is one of the three girls in Alice not to have commenced menstruation, for the little Ma symbol that Lily understands to mean menarche is not there. She counts five girls aged fifteen to sixteen in Helena, including the two monitors Sudie Brown-Caldicot and Kathleen Richmond. One name has a pencilled line through it: that of Esme Sullivan. So she and Kathleen were indeed in the same dormitory …

  There are six girls of seventeen or eighteen in Louise, including the hockey player Eunice Carter and the monitor Rhoda Albercourt. Among the names are several denoting foreign nationality, and Lily recalls what Georgiana Long said about girls from abroad.

  The big ledger provides a conscientious account of every illness, injury, physical malfunction and disability, and Lily is impressed with the diligence of whoever is responsible; at least two women, judging by the different handwriting styles. Lily thinks of Georgiana Long saying, Many girls are sent to Shardlowes School because their families and society at large have little or no use for them. Some of the reasons she gave for these girls’ presence at Shardlowes do not show up in a medical record; Lily thinks of what the little teacher said about those who were too clever or not clever enough; those who constituted one or two daughters too many for a struggling father to manage a dowry. Other conditions, however, are revealed: a girl of nine who is deaf; an eleven-year-old who has fits and is thought to be mentally subnormal; Marigold Dunbar-Lea with her cleft palate and her malformed leg; a girl of seventeen who has calipers; Lily studies the record of sores and abrasions.

  Lily sits perfectly still, totally focused.

  When it dawns on her that there are quiet footsteps approaching along the passage, it is almost too late to put the ledger back in its hiding place, rearrange the pile of napkins and rags, softly close the cupboard door and return to her seat. Trying to control her breathing, she reaches for the big box of assorted bandages set aside for tidying – she cannot be caught doing nothing – and, with an expression of polite enquiry, looks up as the door opens and her visitor comes in.

  Miss Dickie’s hard little eyes stare down at her.

  ‘May I help you, Miss Dickie?’ Lily says calmly.

  Miss Dickie says nothing for a moment. Then, the transparent smile appearing for a moment, she says, ‘It is not an urgent matter, Nurse Henry, but Miss Gerry wonders whether Eunice Carter’s ankle will be recovered in time for hockey practice on Friday.’

  Lily forces a smile. ‘I treated Eunice yesterday, Miss Dickie, and ordered no games at least until next week. If her attendance at hockey practice is really important enough for you to come to enquire about it’ – she hopes her scepticism is not detectable in her voice – ‘then please tell Miss Gerry that I will examine the ankle again on Friday morning and let her know.’

  Miss Dickie bows her head in a curt little nod, turns smartly and takes her leave.

  And Lily thinks, Eunice Carter’s ankle indeed! That old woman was snooping, and very nearly discovered me studying the one thing she undoubtedly hopes will remain hidden from me.

  The shiver of unease comes again, this time with sufficient power to make Lily feel slightly sick.

  The morning passes quickly, for Lily is kept busy. When she takes yet another cup of tea in to Matron, Matron asks – quite politely – if she’ll catch up with the mending if she has nothing better to do, and Lily readily agrees. She sits quietly sewing ragged sheet hems and torn pillowcases, and on her own initiative does a sides-to-middle on a sheet whose central section is almost worn through.

  In the latter part of the morning a ten-year-old called Jessie Killick is brought to the sick bay from a singing class by a highly flustered Miss Smithson. The blood from the child’s copious nosebleed has stained both her own white pinafore and not a few of Miss Smithson’s many garments.

  ‘We were in the middle of “Abide with Me”!’ Miss Smithson exclaims, and the indignant expression she shoots at Jessie Killick suggests it is an extra abomination for the bleeding to have begun during a sacred song.

  Jessie, it becomes apparent, is not a child to be cowed, especially by a near-hysterical spinster clad in far too may flyaway layers of fine wool and chiffon. ‘I loathe “Abide with Me”!’ she hisses from behind the large blood-soaked handkerchief. ‘It’s stupid and it makes the soppy girls cry, but it doesn’t make me cry!’ The look she shoots at Lily out of furious brown eyes sees to say, It takes much more than a song do that, and Lily can’t help but think she’s probably right.

  Seeing that Miss Smithson is gathering herself to issue some emotion-laden reprimand in response to Jessie’s sacrilege, Lily steps in. Taking Jessie by the shoulder, she walks her over to the little stool beside the work bench and sits her down, saying over her shoulder in a tone of clear dismissal, ‘Thank you, Miss Smithson, that will be all. I will care for Jessie now.’

  Miss Smithson’s ineffectual little mouth gapes open. Suddenly looking down at herself, she gives a little gasp of horror. ‘Oh, my goodness gracious, look at me!’ she exclaims. ‘I’m drowned in the wretched child’s blood!’

  Jessie looks at Lily over the bloody handkerchief and Lily can tell from her eyes that she’s grinning maliciously.

  ‘It really isn’t all that much,’ Lily says firmly to Miss Smithson. ‘I suggest you remove the few affected garments and drop them in at the laundry on your way back to your class.’ She places a clear emphasis on the last seven words, wanting to remind Miss Smithson of her responsibilities and, in addition, get rid of her.

  Miss Smithson is fussing about with her shawl and a couple of scarves, but, perhaps recognizing a stronger will – a surely not uncommon occurrence – obediently she turns for the door. ‘I shall have to find another shawl – my violet crocheted one, I believe, will match my ensemble …’ Her voice trails away as she wanders off down the passage.

  Simultaneously Jessie and Lily begin to laugh.

  ‘Enough,’ Lily says after a moment. ‘Now, young lady, let me see what you have done to yourself.’

  For the next few minutes she is busy with cold water, pads of lint and a compress, which she instructs Jessie to hold firmly over the bridge of her nose. Presently it is clear that the bleeding has stopped, and Jessie jumps down from her stool with a cheerful, ‘Thank you, Nurse!’

  ‘Just wait a minute before you dash off, Jessie, because—’

  ‘Oh, I have no intention of dashing off,’ Jessie replies disarmingly. ‘It’s ages before the bell – we’d only just begin the lesson when my nosebleed started – and if I return to class Miss Smithson will make such a fuss.’

  Lily studies her silently. Jessie stares innocently back. ‘The best thing for sudden blood loss is a cup of hot, sweet tea,’ Lily says.

  ‘And a biscuit or two is efficacious, or so I have heard,’ Jessie says hopefully.

  Lily grins. ‘Hop back up on your stool, Jessie, and I shall see what I can do.’

  ‘You’re much nicer than Nurse Evans,’ Jessie declares as they each begin on a second biscuit (Lily makes a mental note to replenish the supply somehow; what with the present incursion and the depredations due to keeping Matron sweet and safely tucked up in bed, the biscuit barrel i
s half empty). ‘But then,’ Jessie adds thoughtfully, ‘Nurse Evans doesn’t like it here.’

  ‘Does she not?’ Lily enquires, affecting only mild interest.

  Jessie shakes her head until a warning hand on her arm from Lily (‘Nosebleed!’ Lily mutters) stops her. ‘No. Me, Harriet and Charlotte – they’re my special friends – and the rest in the dorm think she’s scared.’ Her brown eyes widen as she says the word.

  ‘Nurses don’t get scared, or if they do they are trained not to show it,’ Lily says firmly.

  ‘Well, I can see you don’t get scared,’ Jessie amends, ‘but she’s not like you. She’s frightened of Miss Dickie and as for Miss Carmichael, goodness, we’ve seen Nurse Evans cower behind a door so she didn’t even have to say good morning to Miss Carmichael!’

  ‘I dare say she had her reasons,’ Lily remarks, trying to look as if she is discouraging gossip while in fact doing the precise opposite.

  ‘She did! She did!’ Jessie’s voice is squeaky with excitement. ‘It was at the end of last term, just after the huge upset over the storytelling, and—’

  ‘Storytelling?’

  ‘Oh, of course, you weren’t here.’ Jessie leans close to whisper. ‘The girls in Alice were all very worried about Isa Hatcher going missing – especially since it wasn’t very long since Esme Sullivan in Helena went, though she was quite a lot older – and they kept asking what was being done to find her and the staff and the bigger girls just said everything was all right, she was undoubtedly safe and well, but nobody believed them and the Alice girls started making up ghost stories and horror stories about the Black Dog of the Fens and how he’d been heard howling and then a stooping figure in a dark cloak came in the night and in the morning Isa wasn’t there, and—’ She stops abruptly, the flow of words cut off by a sound that might have been a gulp or a suppressed sob.

  Lily takes her hand. ‘And somebody overheard and reported the girls, and they got into trouble?’